This Chandra image gives the first clear view of the faint boundary of the Crab Nebula's X-ray-emitting pulsar wind nebula. The nebula is powered by a rapidly rotating, highly magnetized neutron star or pulsar.

Imaged by Hubble this pillar is composed of gas and dust. It resides in a stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula. Scorching radiation and fast winds from these stars are sculpting the pillar and causing new stars to form within it.

The region around the center of our Milky Way galaxy glows colorfully in this Spitzer image. Astronomers have determined that these stars are orbiting a massive black hole at the very center of the galaxy.

Edwin Hubble's observations of V1 back in the 1920's was the first critical step in uncovering a larger universe. Prior to the discovery of V1, astronomers thought nebulae, such as Andromeda, were part of our Milky Way galaxy.

This Chandra image of the galaxy Centaurus A provides one of the best views to date of the effects of an active supermassive black hole. Opposing jets of high-energy particles can be seen extending to the outer reaches of the galaxy.

This Hubble image of galaxy NGC 4710 is tilted nearly edge-on to our view from Earth. This perspective allows astronomers to easily distinguish the central bulge of stars from its pancake-flat disk of stars, dust, and gas.

Stephan's Quintet provides a rare opportunity to observe a galaxy group in the process of evolving from a system dominated by spiral galaxies to a more developed system dominated by elliptical galaxies.

As shown in this Hubble image, the larger spiral galaxy (UGC 1810) has a disk that is tidally distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy (UGC 1813) below it.

A growing galactic metropolis is the most distant known massive proto-cluster of galaxies. The cluster was discovered by a suite of multi-wavelength telescopes including Spitzer, Chandra, Hubble and 2 ground telescopes.

This view of nearly 10,000 galaxies is Hubble's deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. The smallest, reddest galaxies may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old.